Scott Roth, son of Robin Roth, is a young man from Roanoke, Virginia, who dies of an overdose on heroin that he bought from his former classmate Spencer Mumpower. Growing up, Scott is well-liked and known for his life-of-the-party personality. Eventually, Scott gets addicted to opioids. He has been on and off drugs since at least 2006 (when he was 17), but for a while, he is able to hide his habit from his mother, claiming that he’s only doing weed (when, in fact, he was already doing heroin). Scott’s death is one of the first ones in the Roanoke region to receive major attention, and it leads to the federal imprisonment of Spencer. Scott’s mother continues to mourn her son’s death, even eight years later when she speaks to Macy for the book. Scott represents how the opioid epidemic was able to stay stealthy in its early days—and how later, it burst into the open, fracturing communities in unexpected ways.